But what do you do when your heart is hurting? When you want to open up your heart but it’s bruised and battered and your faith in love and life is in tatters? Or when your heart is grieving the loss of loved ones, or time past?

I have a little guided meditation that might help. It’s one I recorded a while ago, but it’s perfect for the energies right now. It takes sixteen minutes, but I would suggest allowing extra time at the end for you to integrate the energy of the meditation.

All you need to do is find a spot to sit or lie quietly, and then follow along to the sound of my voice. Feel free to hold a crystal of your choice if that feels right for you.

“Sometimes I think,I need a spare heart to feel all the things I feel.”
~ Sanober Khan

Hello, lovely friends.

Empaths and intuitives everywhere will be feeling more tired and emotionally open (read fragile, emotionally hypersensitive, exhausted and possibly moody or broken) right now.

It’s not your fault. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just born more energetically sensitive than most. And there are factors at play which are ramping up those sensitivities more than usual.

The earth is currently experiencing high solar winds, seismic activity and solar flares. This bombards the earth with positive ions, making it hard for us to ground. The earth’s crust temporarily holds a positive charge rather than a negative one. This is a big deal for sensitive people.

Part of the way that intuitives, sensitives and empaths process information is through the aura (the energy field that sits around your body). You actually bring the emotional and thought-form energy projections of others right into your personal space in the form of positive ions emitted by the other person’s intellectual and emotional processes. Some of this is conscious as you ‘invite’ people to be close and share with you. Some of it is unconscious.

When we’re tired it becomes a more serious problem because we become more ‘open’ and can unwittingly be bombarded by the energies of others.

Usually we can ground into the negative crust of the earth and the build-up of positive ions is then discharged, but with all of the current solar flare activity this is impossible. Without the ability to clear these energies easily we end up processing them as if they were our own – usually during sleep. So then we wake up exhausted after having been hard at work all night!

On top of all of this we are also travelling through the tail-end of the Ursid meteor shower, and those energies will peak today. This meteor shower might not look very impressive in the sky, but microscopic particles of meteor debris are impacting the earth and will be for the next few weeks.

Meteor showers and dust ramp up psychic and emotional sensitivities in humans and animals. It’s a bit like how a sudden cold wind will raise goosebumps on your skin – meteor dust with its unusual electrical charge seems to raise the ‘psychic antennae’ in us. Petrified wood, jaspers, carnelians and hematite will all help to calm that energy down, and placing them in your pets’ bedding or water bowls will also help. You can also wear or hold black tourmaline or turquoise.

Lavender, cedarwood and frankincense essential oils will calm your limbic system and help you feel more calm and settled.

Of course, it’s also Christmas, a time when we are expected to be more social and to mix with family and friends who might trigger us at the best of times…

What to do?

Put yourself first. Tune in and see what your energy level and coping ability is like before committing to invitations and obligations.

Rest. Withdraw. Go quietly. Surround yourself with people who support you or don’t demand from you. Know that it’s okay to say no.

Avoid noisy and crowded spaces if you are already feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. No choice but to be in that space? Wear or carry a supportive crystal to help shield your aura – choose intuitively from your own collection or pick from amethyst, smoky quartz, lepidolite, black tourmaline, carnelian, sugilite hematite, pearls, turquoise, tiger eye and larimar.

Know that it’s okay to honour your own needs. Come home when you need to. Move into a quieter space or another room if you need to.

Manage sensitive kids and teenagers with awareness for their sensitivities right now. Help them to make sound choices around their sensitivities and listen to them when they say they can’t do something or can’t go somewhere. Support them and support yourself.

There are some blessings with the current energies. It’s a great time for all forms of planning, self-awareness, creative work, meditation and spiritual connection. Use your hypersensitivity in positive ways and see it for the gift that it is.

This is a little video I recorded earlier this week. Perhaps you’ll find that helpful too.

“You’re gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle.”
~ David Nicholls, One Day

I was talking with a girlfriend yesterday. A very organised girlfriend who’s a bit of a mother figure to me. She’s had the family Christmas shopping done months ago, and everything is wrapped, waiting to go under the tree.

‘Gee,’ she said, ‘I wonder what abominations I’ll get this year…’

I asked her what she meant.

‘All I want is a good nightie. A comfortable one in soft cotton that’s nice to sleep in. I give hints all year, but the kids and grandkids always get me some horrible thing with cartoon animals, or David gets me some lacy sexy thing that appeals to him but is scratchy and synthetic and awful.’

‘Could you go with them to choose it?’ I asked.

‘No! Then it wouldn’t be a surprise.’ My friend pulled a pouty face worthy of a five-year-old.

I smiled. She is adorable at nearly sixty, and one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I know. ‘Would there be better presents for them to get you?’ I asked.

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Books, chocolate, bath products, perfume. Any of those would be good. Even a colouring book. The complete Harry Potter series would be even better. I’ve alway wanted to read that.’

Image from twosistergethealthy.wordpress.com

‘Well, tell them that’s what you want. Write a list for them even. Then go buy yourself the nightie you want and put it under the tree from Santa for you. That way everyone’s happy.’

‘But I can’t do that!’ she protested. ‘Christmas is about you being thoughtful for other people, and them being thoughtful for you.’

And therein lies the problem. Worth. Not everyone is as thoughtful or observant or organised as my friend. No-one else knows that her definition of Christmas is about other people being as thoughtful for her as she is for them. Or that thoughtfulness is a soft cotton nightie. Why can’t my friend be thoughtful for herself too?

You’re always doomed to disappointment with a set-up like that.

Christmas is not a test of love and worthiness. Don’t treat it as such. Don’t wait for others to demonstrate your worthiness based upon a framework they can’t even access.

I get that surprises are wonderful. You can get a surprise from the smallest thing. A surprise means you didn’t know what gift you’d get. Surprise! Let the gifts others give you be accepted in the spirit of surprise, gratitude and appreciation. Or good manners, if that is all you can muster, and especially if there was no thought, love or care reciprocated.

This year, if you really have your heart set on something, give it to yourself. You are worthy of the thought and consideration you give others. You are worthy enough to spend your own money on you.

My Christmas gift to myself this year is going to be prawns in white sauce served on toast with a glass of champagne. That was Ceddie and Marga’s (my grandparents on my mum’s side) favourite Christmas breakfast. I miss them heaps, especially at Christmas. My husband doesn’t like prawns. That’s okay. I’ve asked him and he wants a full-on Canadian breakfast. We have the technology to do that.

It’s okay to be kind and thoughtful to yourself, and to meet your own needs. If you don’t treat yourself like that, how will other people know to do that?